Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

satyreyes wrote:

In case anyone is interested in reading transcripts of the commentaries and assorted interviews, Gio and Yasha now host the ones they've been able to track down right here on Empty Movement!

This. The commentaries, and indeed almost everything available from the creators in terms of statements and interviews, are available for reading on this very site and have been all along, as even a cursory browse of the front page would've uncovered.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Aelanie wrote:

satyreyes wrote:

In case anyone is interested in reading transcripts of the commentaries and assorted interviews, Gio and Yasha now host the ones they've been able to track down right here on Empty Movement!

This. The commentaries, and indeed almost everything available from the creators in terms of statements and interviews, are available for reading on this very site and have been all along, as even a cursory search would've uncovered.

If people want to. Being a SKU fan does not oblige anyone to read all the interviews and commentaries. Many of us, maybe most of us, learn most of what we learn from other fans. Heck, I've read the commentaries and I didn't remember the part you quoted. If you want to memorize all the ancillary material -- good for you! But I draw the line at shaming others for not doing the same, or insinuating that other fans aren't "respectable" because they made a different choice. Short version: be nice.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Aelanie wrote:This. The commentaries, and indeed almost everything available from the creators in terms of statements and interviews, are available for reading on this very site and have been all along, as even a cursory browse of the front page would've uncovered.

I myself seldom ever visit the Empty Movement except for going directly to its galleries and maybe some of its scripts on via bookmarks, since I was under the impression that there had not been significant updates for years (I could be wrong though). I hang around parts of the forums - except for the shaved-ice forum, which seem largely irrelevant for my interest - for old and new info on SKU. Does that give people the right to condescend to me and other fans similar to myself? I think not

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Aelanie wrote:

satyreyes wrote:

In case anyone is interested in reading transcripts of the commentaries and assorted interviews, Gio and Yasha now host the ones they've been able to track down right here on Empty Movement!

This. The commentaries, and indeed almost everything available from the creators in terms of statements and interviews, are available for reading on this very site and have been all along, as even a cursory browse of the front page would've uncovered.

Sorry to be pedantic, but doesn't the front page also show that the Be-PaPas section was only added in May last year? With that in mind, I wouldn't say the interviews have been around "all along", especially since this topic was first created back in 2009...

This is only tangently on topic (because I've never been terribly keen on True Fan(tm) politics) but it drives me a little nuts when fans elsewhere accuse movie!Anthy of having been given a "race lift" just because her skin tone's a little different and her hair is straight instead of wavy. I've always chalked the skin tone up to the movie's colour pallet (and it's still pretty obvious that she's not white or Japanese, especially with her fancier bindi in Rose Bride mode) and the change in hairstyle just mirrors the fact that Utena's hair has gone from straight in the series to wavy in the movie. =/

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

MikoGalatea wrote:

Sorry to be pedantic, but doesn't the front page also show that the Be-PaPas section was only added in May last year? With that in mind, I wouldn't say the interviews have been around "all along", especially since this topic was first created back in 2009...

I joined the site in 2009, and to my knowledge there has always been a section with those transcripts. It was simply updated and reorganized at that time, I believe, although this is neither here nor there.

it drives me a little nuts when fans elsewhere accuse movie!Anthy of having been given a "race lift" just because her skin tone's a little different and her hair is straight instead of wavy. I've always chalked the skin tone up to the movie's colour pallet (and it's still pretty obvious that she's not white or Japanese, especially with her fancier bindi in Rose Bride mode) and the change in hairstyle just mirrors the fact that Utena's hair has gone from straight in the series to wavy in the movie. =/

Agreed. It's especially sad when you consider that Anthy is one of the relatively few dark-skinned characters in anime/manga that does not fall into a racial caricature or stereotype of the race to which they vaguely belong. She is actually a good example of racial variety done right, in both the series and movie.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Aelanie wrote:

I joined the site in 2009, and to my knowledge there has always been a section with those transcripts. It was simply updated and reorganized at that time, I believe, although this is neither here nor there.

It's pretty new -- May last year is about right -- though I agree that that's beside the point.

It's especially sad when you consider that Anthy is one of the relatively few dark-skinned characters in anime/manga that does not fall into a racial caricature or stereotype of the race to which they vaguely belong. She is actually a good example of racial variety done right, in both the series and movie.

This is an interesting question to me. Anthy certainly is not a caricature of an Indian, but at the same time, her ethnicity doesn't seem to inform her identity in any way at all. I wonder if racial variety done right is really as simple as writing a bunch of characters whose personalities and actions have nothing to do with their races, and then assigning them the races that look cool. Intuitively, I feel that where a person comes from, which includes their race and ethnicity among other things, ought to bear on who they are. Racial variety done right, to me, would mean that we can see how a person's race (and the background that goes with it) shapes em, in a way that goes beyond stereotypes. I don't think Anthy is a great example of this mode of writing, but at least she's not stereotyped.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

The status of women in India has been subject to many great changes over the past few millennia.[2][3] From equal status with men in ancient times[4] through the low points of the medieval period<SKIP> Medieval period

The Indian woman's position in the society further deteriorated during the medieval period[5][10] when Sati among some communities, child marriages and a ban on widow remarriages became part of social life among some communities in India. The Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent brought the purdah practice in the Indian society. Among the Rajputs of Rajasthan, the Jauhar was practised. In some parts of India, the Devadasis or the temple women were sexually exploited. Polygamy was widely practised especially among Hindu Kshatriya rulers.[19] In many Muslim families, women were restricted to Zenana areas.

Add this info to the visual clues of how Akio Anthy kingdom is a medieval one . . . could the ethnic look be a hint as to how Anthy is supposed to be just as repressed as those medieval Indian Women even though she lives in modern times?

That, and the Indian look served the purpose I mentioned before upthread: it's a visual clue to show that Anthy/Mamiya - with the dot on the forehead just like the Himemiyas - is unlikely to be the real Chida Mamiya.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

satyreyes wrote:

This is an interesting question to me. Anthy certainly is not a caricature of an Indian, but at the same time, her ethnicity doesn't seem to inform her identity in any way at all. I wonder if racial variety done right is really as simple as writing a bunch of characters whose personalities and actions have nothing to do with their races, and then assigning them the races that look cool. Intuitively, I feel that where a person comes from, which includes their race and ethnicity among other things, ought to bear on who they are. Racial variety done right, to me, would mean that we can see how a person's race (and the background that goes with it) shapes em, in a way that goes beyond stereotypes.

I don't agree. I personally think it is as simple as writing human characters with human personalities, goals, and motivations irrespective of race. Background should play a part, but that's a function of culture, not race. Races, and the cultures that are commonly conflated with them, are entirely separate things. (In fact, that's the entire problem of racial caricatures: the presentation of aspects of a culture as an inalienable part of a race that just happens to be associated with it.)

But what if there is no such cultural background? Consider the many child adoptees from poorer parts of the world who are raised from a very young age by adoptive families of completely different races and cultures in more affluent nations. Does their "racial heritage" form any real part of who they grow up to be? An even more pointed question is, should it?

I personally don't believe so. To expect that race will always affect a person's make-up a certain way is, in my opinion at least, knocking on the door of the kind of thinking that leads to the "all jews are greedy", "all asians are sneaky" manner of stereotypes. Maybe I'm wrong, but I want to believe that human nature is more universal than that, and that we aren't so chained to our biology.

In any case, I think we can agree on one thing: whatever Anthy and Akio may truly be, they are definitely not products of the culture of the nation of India!

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Well, the potential Indian-ness does keep the connection to India, re the whole curry escapade. And I think it does go a way to establishing her as separate from the rest of the cast and school. Her brother, as well, has the air of cool foreigner running through his portrayal (India with shades of Europe, in his case, but then, that's curry of the sort they make in the curry episode, too - see? it all fits together ). It's Leo Blooming the ethnicity - it looks cool, gives a taste of dissonance.

It's not really where they come from, anyway. They may not come from anywhere we recognize, as highlighted in the show and the movie by the distance of Ohtori from the world and things like phones ringing and alarms going while storybook princesses are denounced as witches by mad crowds and Anthy writhing impales on a crown of thorns or whatever. They're from storybook land or the upper west side of the id. There may not be an India, in SKU, either one students could visit or that anyone at Ohtori came from at some point. Even the shadow girls are straw puppets.

Semi-connected, does anyone remember if it's Ikuni or someone else who said they, roughly, intended Saionji to be an exploration of the specifically post-WW2 Japanese weight of traditional masculinity (and that's why non-Japanese audiences might be less sympathetic to him)? That's the most ethnographic-exploration I can think of in the show.

My Brain is the Wakaba and Shiori Funtime Hour. With limited commercial interruption.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Decrescent Daytripper wrote: intended Saionji to be an exploration of the specifically post-WW2 Japanese weight of traditional masculinity

This is very apparent from Sai's speech pattern; and yes, traditional WWII era Japanese masculinity do include beating women into submission when they disobey (very common), along with dying chivalrously to defend them from harm if necessary (much less common); that, and all men can rightfully have multiple mistresses.

It's not really where they come from, anyway. They may not come from anywhere we recognize, as highlighted in the show and the movie by the distance of Ohtori from the world and things like phones ringing and alarms going while storybook princesses are denounced as witches by mad crowds and Anthy writhing impales on a crown of thorns or whatever. They're from storybook land or the upper west side of the id.

Not the India that we know of, that's for sure . . . maybe some advanced ancient civilization in the Bible's Tower of Babel (aka human technology can threaten God) mythical era, or maybe a lost civilization ala Maya or Atlantis . . . or maybe they really are aliens as is hinted by the Shadow Girls.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Aelanie wrote:

But what if there is no such cultural background? Consider the many child adoptees from poorer parts of the world who are raised from a very young age by adoptive families of completely different races and cultures in more affluent nations. Does their "racial heritage" form any real part of who they grow up to be? An even more pointed question is, should it?

I think it's unlikely that a culture-less background exists for anyone. An Indian girl may be adopted at a very young age by Japanese parents and brought up in Japanese culture, but is she treated just the same as a Japanese child? By her parents? By her teachers? By her peers? Does she experience no cognitive dissonance at being of a different race from her parents? Does she have no interest in Indian culture, prompted by her race? Has she never felt like an outsider? Obviously the answers to these questions depend on the individual child and her circumstances, but it's hard to imagine that her race will have no impact on her life or her adult identity. Otherwise there would be no such thing as privilege, and I think the existence of privilege is pretty well established.

I'm not at all expecting that "race will always affect a person's make-up a certain way" in the stereotyped senses you name. But I do expect that the experiences of a person of one race will differ from the experiences of a similarly situated person of another race, because of the interactions between them and their societies. A novel about the Indian-Japanese girl above would feel narratively unsatisfying if we didn't see either how her race affected her life, or exactly why it did not. Part of the reason this thread was started may have been that some of us felt narratively unsatisfied in just this way.

In any case, I think we can agree on one thing: whatever Anthy and Akio may truly be, they are definitely not products of the culture of the nation of India!

Yes indeed! And this is exactly what leads to the thread's title questions.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

I am trying to re-state what others have said but in a slightly different way.

Anno ran into similar problems with Nadia. She makes a big deal of going to Africa where she was born but in the end there is nothing African about her. She makes it to Africa and it's almost an anti-climax. Jean-Luc is infatuated with her and if there is any message, it is that love and beauty transcend race and ethnicity. But there is no exploration of how ethnicity shapes a person's worldview. I have never seen that in anything from Japan although somewhere there must be a Japanese writer who has successfully addressed that theme. Ultimately it turns out that Nadia's roots are not even on the Earth and maybe her looks were meant to give an initial clue about her status as an outsider. Anno piled on one thing after another to make her seem more and more of an outsider.

So also Akio and Anthy are probably meant to be generic Outsiders who are simultaneously Insiders. Their appearance is a shortcut clue to that. They look cool and sexy. They are also deviant and dangerous and have unknown powers. Just like all foreigners everywhere. So, like Nadia, their foreign appearance served several purposes: to explore the theme of love and attraction crossing traditional barriers; and to provide a shortcut hint that they are even stranger than they look. But there is no hint of a meaningful exploration of ethnicity.

So I have a question: has anyone ever seen a manga that explored the lives of Barakumin or even Koreans?

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

brian wrote:

I am trying to re-state what others have said but in a slightly different way.

Anno ran into similar problems with Nadia. She makes a big deal of going to Africa where she was born but in the end there is nothing African about her. She makes it to Africa and it's almost an anti-climax. Jean-Luc is infatuated with her and if there is any message, it is that love and beauty transcend race and ethnicity. But there is no exploration of how ethnicity shapes a person's worldview. I have never seen that in anything from Japan although somewhere there must be a Japanese writer who has successfully addressed that theme. Ultimately it turns out that Nadia's roots are not even on the Earth and maybe her looks were meant to give an initial clue about her status as an outsider. Anno piled on one thing after another to make her seem more and more of an outsider.

I understand your point, but you don't seem to know the whole backstory of Nadia, which is one of the great tragedies of anime. With a pedigree of Gainax at its prime and Anno at the wheel, it should've been one of the greatest anime ever - and for the first 8 episodes or so, it is. I can't tell you how captivated I was by the series during that first arc, when everything was going as it should.

However, that's when executive meddling stepped in. Because of the show's popularity, the television station requested the show be extended from 26 episodes to 39, which was far more than the studio ever intended. This put them under an incredible pressure of time, effort, and funds. Anno was working 18-hour days. The show had to be briefly put on hiatus because they were out of money. Eventually, Anno had to ask another Gainax member, Higuchi Shinji, to supervise the interim episodes while he focused on the ending. The episodes he was put in charge of were episodes 23 to 34, which are now known as the infamously bad "Nadia's Island/Africa" filler arc.

The toll Nadia took on Anno is directly responsible for the depression he fell into afterwards, and which is what famously led to Evangelion. If it were up to Anno, the whole Island/Africa nonsense would never have existed. It was rushed filler, never intended or planned for by Anno or the studio, and made by another staff member solely to fill time. He hated it, and later went on to produce an abbreviated version of Nadia that omitted all of the Island/Africa stuff except for the two episodes involving "Red Noah".

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

I think the Hesse-connection is the best explanation yet. SKU explicitly quotes Demian, and the similarities in the plot are obvious.I have yet to read Hesse's India-themed works, though, but I know of someone who has: Salman Rushdie. Interestingly, one of his newest novels, "The Enchantress of Florence", draws heavily on Hesse, too, and bears striking similarities with themes from Utena, especially the Taboos of incest and the witch. (great read, btw.)

I have another theory, though, on what *might* have influenced the character of Akio.Does anyone remember that sexy, dominant, lucifer quoting, super-human, womanizing indian guy from that famous sci-fi series, who later turns up in a movie again, flashing his muscly-manboobs and wearing a mullet?Yup, I'm talking about Star Trek's Khan.(and McGivers is totally wearing Tokiko's (or Utena's) hairstyle http://cosmicduckling.com/spirk/khanfest/marla.jpg)

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Bump.

Was it officially confirmed that Anthy and Akio were Indian? Could it, say, be entirely possible for them to be Romani? Here's why I think so:

1. It would fit in with the European Medieval Fantasy motifs of the show better, since as you know the Romani people, while decending from the people of India, have roamed Europe and have been acquainted with European customs.

2. While they don't wear Bindi like the one Anthy wears, they do wear decorations that are similar to it.

3. The Romani are, much like Jewish people, a much oppressed people and serve as convenient scapegoats for European politics... Including being executed for false accusations of prague burnings and Witch hunts. This would be especially appropriate for Anthy, the Rose Bride subject to the Swords of Hate.

4. They have been known to practise Shaktism, "...whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_so … d_culture. This could mirror how Akio's source of power, inside the rose-vine covered coffin we see in Episode 39, is actually Anthy herself.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Hey that does fit really well! Especially with them being isolated and pretty frequently the victims of social scorn. I wonder what the Japanese opinion of them would be, though, that might motivate the comparison? I believe Saito at one point does describe them as 'Indian in appearance' for what value that has, but the show draws from so many cultural elements I see no reason to include another one!

I feel inclined to assume any reading of them as Romani is going to depend a lot on negative stereotyping done by Europeans at large, since it's likely the view Japanese people are most exposed to. Penchant for gaudiness and trickery, obsessive devotion to family over everything, and so on.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Giovanna wrote:

Penchant for gaudiness and trickery, obsessive devotion to family over everything, and so on.

Let's not forget their bride kidnapping tradition! This actually makes for a strong case. Interesting. Although personally I doubt that it was intentional and that Anthy and Akio were indeed supposed to be Romani.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Giovanna wrote:

I feel inclined to assume any reading of them as Romani is going to depend a lot on negative stereotyping done by Europeans at large, since it's likely the view Japanese people are most exposed to. Penchant for gaudiness and trickery, obsessive devotion to family over everything, and so on.

Yeah, unfortunately.

I suppose stereotypes (and questioning their validity) are a core concept Utena, so I wonder if the writing team could have somehow interwoven that into the narrative if given the chance. Although if I'm being frank, I don't trust a team of mostly native Japanese to write it well...

And awww thank you y'all! The idea just popped in my head one day is all.

Re: Why are Anthy and Akio Indian? (or are they Indian?)

Yeah it's one of the few instances where I don't necessarily go with death of the author readings. Being steeped in Japanese culture before the advent of the 'global' culture...or even now...does heavily impact the use of stereotyping, for good and ill, in the show.

They do depict a lot of things that are clearly meant to appear western in nature, including the entire look of the school, or the references to western art and literature, but it has that haze about it, like they might have been very informed about what they were representing or using, but ultimately were experiencing it second hand. Which isn't a bad thing at all, it's just something you have to forgive them for.